The Ladder Theory Part IV- Consequences of the Ladder

 

Consequences of the Ladder

Toward a Meaning of Life

Conveniently, the ladder theory answers the often-asked question, "What is the purpose of life?" The purpose of life is to move up the ladder. The person you are with now should be better (higher on your ladder) than the person you were last with. Okay, it's not perfect but if you have no direction in life, trying to bed hotter and hotter chicks or richer and richer guys is as good a place as any to start. In addition to giving a good base toward a meaning of life, there are a few other things that ladder theory explains.

Topping out the Ladder:

    Have you ever seen a guy that was not particularly attractive, rich or muscled yet was with a lovely woman? For most guys the most common reaction is envy, something like "Hey I'm not all that muscled, attractive or rich either. Why can't I be beding a girl like that?" We at intellectual whores used to feel this way about "stump factor" as well. But then ladder theory was discovered and we realized that it was more rational to pity this man.

    Ladder theory tells us that the purpose of life is to move up the ladder. When their relationship ends, he will probably never be able to get another woman as good as the one he is with right now -- the rest of his life he'll likely be striving in vain. In effect, he's doomed the whole rest of his life to meaninglessness unless he marries this girl. This of course is just trading one type of doom for another.

Ladder Disparity

    The ladder is obviously a two-way process. When Bob meets Jane, he puts her on his ladder and she puts him on her ladder. It often happens that one person is a lot higher on your ladder than you are on theirs, or vice versa. The leads to a situation that looks like this:

    Notice that Bob has Jane very low while Bob is very high on Jane's ladder. He is most likely rich and she is most likely ugly. Anyhow this is a classic case of disparity. If we connect the two points we can make a right triangle. The resulting hypotenuse "c" is the magnitude of the disparity.

    Common shorthand among ladder theorists is "Well, she caught him bedding a stewardess and didn't leave him but what do you expect for a level 5 disparity." The position of being high on someone else's ladder while having them low on yours is referred to as being in the "upper" or "power" position. This is good and leads to different things depending on who is in the power position.

    If the man is in the upper position the disparity is a measure of how long the woman will put up with him cheating, using her physically without committing, or paying his rent and all his bills.

    If the woman is in a power position then it is a measure of how much the man will spend money on her, fetch her things at midnight, and listen to stories about other guys she is sleeping with. .

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Manifestations of the Ladder

Classical Ladder Theory admittedly treats relationships as binary, in the sense of sex or not sex. There are in-between cases, which I feel the Ladder addresses. In this section, we will take some common scenarios and see how they are explained within the framework of ladder theory. The first two, cuddle bitches and friends with benefits were proposed in an email I received so I have dealt with them first.

On Cuddle Bitches

Cuddle Bitches

cuddle bitch(n) - a guy who never gets to sleep with a girl but gets to have intimate moments with her like cuddling, spooning, or otherwise being affectionate. Usually, this will occur in private. She probably considers him a really sweet guy, which is the kiss of death.

First off, cuddle bitches are bad, bad things to be. Maybe the worst thing to be. I mean, being an Intellectual Whore is bad, but being an Intellectual Whore who has to endure blue-balls is bordering on criminal.

As to how it fits into the framework of the ladder.

Basically, this is just a guy who has a very high position on the friends ladder. So far up the friends ladder that he gets the dubious honor of getting to provide all the intimacy that a girl is missing when she's off sleeping with  guys who basically don't care about her like outlaw bikers and band members. So he gets to be the proxy father/confessor/friend/teddy bear for her, depending on what she is missing at the time. Perhaps the only consolation of this is a ladder jump to the real ladder seems statistically a little more likely to succeed. Of course, when one is that high up the fall is dreadful indeed....

How do we know this? Well, if a woman had a nice loving boyfriend then he would be doing all the cuddling and whatnot and likely wouldn't stand for a woman maintaining a stable of cuddle bitches. Unless he's completely pussified, in which case she's likely sleeping with  some other people anyway.

For guys unacquainted with Ladder Theory, it is even worse. The cuddle bitch often thinks he is on the good ladder as opposed to the real ladder. So he gets all excited about his position instead of realizing he is being completely used. So this poor tool is really setting himself up for a fall at that point. Personally, I do like cuddling and waking up with her head resting on my chest, but it does feel better if there's the emotional connection and we had exhausting sex the night before. 

Note: This does not apply if cuddling under the influence of mushrooms, for the express purpose of avoiding hypothermia, or if the woman is a whore that you've recently paid for sex. Cuddling is perfectly acceptable and probably non-sexual in these circumstances.

Friends With Benefits:

    This is the case where you get to sleep with a woman or have some sort of intimate physical relationship without any sort of commitment.

    All we can say to this situation is: bravo! This is the optimal condition to be in--with as many women as possible . Personal comment here- not originally in the theory description, I’m not up for that, as I feel there are more fulfilling activities other than sex, but don’t take my word for it, explore what you like.

    A lot of people try to use this condition as a criticism of ladder theory, so I'll state again here that this fits perfectly in the framework of ladder theory. A woman has two ladders, but the second one is the 'guys I would have sex with' ladder, NOT the 'relationship ladder.' So 'friends with benefits' is a complete bloody  misnomer, since you are not actually 'friends', you are quite more than that. The Ladder Theory only states what makes a woman want to have sex with a man, it does not take the puerile view that women don't want to have sex, or that they have to be somehow tricked into it. If you are a 'friend with benefits', then you are on the Real Ladder. Congratulations. If you get replaced, you haven't been demoted ladders, you have merely been replaced by someone higher than you on the Real Ladder.

    That being said, usually, women are more interested in long-term relationships than men and consent to this form of relationship because there is a ladder disparity in favour of the male. A lot of women say that they are just having sex, they like it as much as men etc... While the second statement is undoubtedly exaggerated, there is no reason to think that women don't want to have sex just as much as men. Which if course only makes it worse if a woman doesn't want to have sex with you.

Of Female Footstools

    Judging by the amount of mail I have gotten about it, a LOT of guys are using the tactic of making friends with the less-than-attractive friend of a girl they want to sleep with in order to score points with the girl higher up the ladder. I have never found this to work very well for me personally, but it does not require an addendum to the Theory and can be explained within the framework of Classical Ladder Theory.

    Let us call the woman you are using to score points with the woman you want to sleep with  the 'footstool.' The woman you are trying tosleep with  we will call the 'target.'

    There are two basic situations here. One is that you would sleep with  the footstool. This is the easiest one. If you would , then you're not really friends. The other is that you wouldn't do it the footstool. If we look at the ways that men can have female friends we find if you wouldn't do them or if you are doing it with someone better. In this case, the target is by definition better, or else the target would be the footstool. So the whole thing is explained by the Ladder Theory already. Of course, the very idea of calling someone you are merely using to sleep with  someone else a 'friend' is a little ridiculous also. It has never occurred to me to use this tactic, but it does remind me of a cute girl I saw once on the beach and her chubbier friend who was doing topless to attract males, she probably would have been very open in bed being thankful for the attention, a lot more so than her pretty looking friend who was used to it. I guess I'll never know, but maybe the footstool may be fun by itself? 

    One interesting thing about footstools is it is about as close as a woman can usually get to knowing what it is like to be an intellectual whore.

Exes

    Exes are not a special case in the ladder. Usually when someone gets broken up with it's because the other person thinks they can do better on the Ladder. Or already has. If you didn't think you could do better why would you leave the one you were with?

    The usual pattern for exes is to try to be friends, realize it's not going to really work, and then become more and more distant toward each other over time. In any case, if you continue to have sex for a while, then you continue to do it . You wouldn't have had a relationship with them if they were not on the real ladder, so if it's convenient there's really no reason not to (personal comment here, I did and it wasn’t a great idea, regrated ever since. She was great in bed though).

If you are friends, then the normal rules of how men and women can be friends apply. But it should be said, that many exes try to be friends because it seems like some shit they should do, when in reality one of them is hoping they will get back together or at least continue to have sex. Been there, done that twice. 

 

Whoremasters: The Pathology of the Intellectual Pimp

    For every intellectual whore there must be an intellectual pimp.  An intellectual pimp is defined as a woman and a man is an intellectual whore. Here we will examine the relationship of a man to his intellectual pimp. We will examine the pathology of the intellectual pimp and enumerate the most common types of intellectual pimps.

Intellectual Whoredom is (usually) a Victimless Crime

    Listen: Women who keep intellectual whores are not bad people.  Unless they are not clear that they will not sleep with their intellectual whore and thus keep him enthralled by a false implied promise of future sexual activity.  Then they are bad people. So I guess many of them are bad people. But if a grown-ass man knows that he has little to no chance to sleep with  and still lets himself become an intellectual whore, he has nobody to blame except for himself. Especially if he's read the Ladder Theory.

Many intellectual whores get something out of the relationship--if they're masochists. Many of them are holding out for their intellectual pimp to realize how good they would be together. Those are called fools and deserve every minute of mental anguish they suffer. Some men are so pussified they are unable to summarily dismiss a woman from their life if she won't sleep with him, even though this is usually the appropriate course of action. You probably only met her because you wanted to bed her, why keep her around if you can't? Some women are interesting enough to keep around, or maybe are useful as footstools, but I almost never meet them. In any case, if she felt no obligation to bed you, you should feel no obligation to keep her as a friend, which calls for much more time and energy.

Why Do Women Want Intellectual Whores?

Emotional Reasons

"... because every guy you met since you were 16 has been trying to sleep with  you.  Every time a man's being nice to you that's all he's doing is offering dick."
        Rabbi Chris Rock

Lemma 1: Although they may not have been aware of it at the time, women who are even moderately attractive have had guys trying to sleep with them since practically the day they hit puberty. This is no surprise given society's obsession with youth and the general horniness of males. Women who aren't aware of this soon find it out, however.  If there is a woman over 16 who still thinks that guys she doesn't know come up to her and start making conversation because they think she looks like an interesting person she was probably raised by wolves or something. On a related note, this is probably why beautiful people tend to be boring.   They never had to be interesting -- being beautiful was always interesting enough.


Lemma 2: As women age they become less and less attractive to men. Sure some mature women are still sexy, and plenty of people might like to sleep with Goldie Hawn, but most women don't have the advantage of on-demand plastic surgery, full-time makeup artists, dieticians, flattering camera angles, and having 'looking good' as a job requirement.  There simply are no old women that normal guys are really attracted to.  Lots of women want to sleep with Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, and Jack Nicholson.  There is not a woman as old as any of those people that a guy would sleep with  on the grounds of being attracted to her. The sad fact of nature.

Lemma 3: Women don't generally want to think of themselves as or be regarded as whores. It's a sad fact of socialization that women who like to have a lot of sex with different men are called bad names.  Whores are great, and we would do well to work toward making the words 'cocksucker' and 'whore' and 'slut' non-derogatory.

    Women eventually get tired of being wanted just for their bodies.  Unless they're really ugly, in which case they'd probably be happy to be wanted for anything. That is why the easiest girls to score with are always the kind of ugly/fat best friends of really hot women.  They get no attention from guys when they have to compete with their hot friends, but they can always get attention by putting out (see the girl on the beach I mentioned earlier).  It's kind of sad, but in terms of easy, a not-attractive-girl-with-low-self-esteem-and-a- really-hot-best-friend is about the safest bet you can make. Back to the matter at hand.  Just like intellectual whores get tired of only being wanted for their minds.

Even the hottest woman entertains fantasies of a man who really wants her for her mind, her personality, all of those inner attributes that really make her who she is.  She knows that she can use her body to get what she wants, every woman knows that on some level.  The success of such will depend on how nice her body is of course...Christie Brinkley can use hers to catch real-estate moguls. The girl down the street may just be able to get into clubs for free, or get a drink bought for her.

    At some point all but the shallowest women will want to know that they are good for something besides sex, and so the intellectual whore is born.

    Gay guys and straight women are no good for this, a person who is not sexually attracted to you can't give you any kind of validation that you are wanted for your mind. If I only talk to you because you are no good for sex, that's not as good a bolster for the ego as my knowing you are hot and not wanting to have  sex  with you because I like you too much. Also women don't like each other very much.

    Obviously it can't be someone they are beding.  If you get someone you are having sex with  to listen to your story about how your father was emotionally distant or get them to go to the ballet with you, there's always the possibility that they wouldn't have if you weren't doing it with them.

    So what does that leave?  Straight men who will actually listen to them and can be entertaining, smart, or funny.  Straight men will buy them food, be their emotional crutch, and go with them to places their boyfriends won't go. The intellectual whore offers both a useful service and a form of validation that no other person can match. A guy that puts up with all of the bullshit for none of the reward. A guy who does things for you and is so nice. A guy that clearly is a non-sexual being, he just likes you for you, that's why he listens to your shit for hours on end, and goes places with you, and gives you advice about guys, and loves the films of Bergman and the books of David Sedaris and Dave Eggers. And he likes you for you.  You're cultured and intelligent. You can sleep with as as many outlaw bikers as you want -- you're not a shallow whore.  Really. If you were, why would this sweet guy do all that for you...you really are worth more than the power you hold between your legs...no really you are....really.

    To recap: Usually, a guy who would do all manner of things for a woman would have to be sleeping with . Sometimes they find a guy who is willing to do shit for them even though he is not getting laid. This is like a guy finding a girl who wants to have sex and then leave. They basically get to feel like they are worth something more than the sex they have to offer, because here is this guy who is so sweet and all that crap who doesn't want to bed  them (they think).

Material Reasons:

    Some people are just users, and 'will use any scumbag for whatever I want....that just makes me smarter than you.' as one lovely young lady put it in an email to me. Sometimes it's just nice to have someone who will go get you coffee and go to a movie with you so you don't have to go alone.  So there are material benefits to certain intellectual whores as well.

A Few Common Types of Intellectual Pimps To Look Out For

    There are undoubtedly more archetypes than this one, but here are a few of the major ones to look for.

1.  The Hot Woman:

    This is a woman who knows that she is attractive and that guys want to do her.  She probably has a boyfriend or a stable of steady Outlaw Biker sex buddies.  You were probably trying to do her and got tossed onto the friend ladder.

Advantages as Intellectual Pimp: Hot women have busy social lives.  Because of this, they are usually not very demanding on an intellectual whore's time.  Also, it looks good to be seen with them.  Try to get a picture of you with your hot Pimp and then tell other women that was your fiancee who died.

Disadvantages: Because they are used to having their ass kissed, when they do require your time, they are generally more demanding.  You'd think they would have hot friends you could go after, but hot women of course see all other hot women as threats and often as not will put you off-limits to their hot friends.  Also, if you don't rank highly on her ladder, what makes you think that you'll be high up on the ladder of her hot friends?  This usually leads to being around hot women that you still can't have sex with. 

Ladder Jumping Prospects:  Make sure to get your last rites administered before you attempt this ladder jump.

2. The Ugly Friend:

        This is a woman that we should all empathize with on some level.  This is the woman who has a hot friend.  She is not hot.  This usually leads to guys talking to her so they can try to do her friend.  Eventually, she learns that she can get attention from guys by putting out, since she'll never otherwise get attention when with her hot friend.  Of course, some guys won't do her still because they think it will jeopardize their chances with the hot friend.  

Advantages: Not being hot, they are easier to say 'no' to.  Also, you don't feel so bad about not having sex  because you probably don't want to very much anyway.  You can try to do the hot friend to amuse yourself.  

Disadvantages: Even when you don't want to dosomeone, you still want them to want to do you.  Many men can't handle the ego blow of a girl they don't find attractive not wanting to do them.

Ladder Jumping Prospects:  Say 5 Hail Mary's and 4 Our-Fathers before attempting this jump. 

3. The Innocent:

    This is a woman who has led a sheltered life, watched too many Sandra Bullock movies, or is just an idealistic soul who refuses to see what is right in front of her.

Advantages: She'll generally not suspect any nefarious activity from you, and thus is less guarded around you.  Since you're such good friends you can initiate a lot of physical contact with her before she gets uncomfortable.

Disadvantages: If she has a boyfriend she's probably actually loyal to him, believing in romantic principles as she does.  She probably won't be able to tell you anything useful about how to get a woman off, or will be unwilling to discuss it.

Ladder Jumping Prospects: If she is in a relationship have the last rites administered first.  If not, and you sound sincere, say 5 Acts of Contrition, 4 Hail-Mary and 7 Our Fathers. If you don't sound convincing, say 10 Hail Marys and 50 Our Fathers.